The AmericaPACs Election Integrity Community: How Social Media Harms Donald Trump and the Campaign for Pre-election Correlations

The work of other election-denying groups, like the Election Integrity Network, have been augmented by the AmericaPACs Election Integrity Community group. “This is a parallel anti-election, anti-democracy campaign designed to sow confusion and lay the groundwork for baseless objections to elections after Election Day. “It’s very dangerous, and it’s going on all across the country.” “And we’re going to see the results of it almost immediately when the polls close on November 5th.”

In January 2021, the company then known as Twitter banned Trump’s account for incitement to violence during the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. But since taking over and rebranding it as X, Musk has fired many of the people on the teams that worked to keep mis- and disinformation off the platform. Last year, X fired much of what remained of its elections integrity team. Musk said on X after the news broke that the Elections Integrity team was trying to undermine election integrity. Yeah, they’re gone.”

Since endorsing former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump following the first assassination attempt against him in July, Musk has become one of Trump’s most important financial backers, pouring more than $100 million into the America PAC since July. The PAC has also been a pillar of the Trump campaign’s ground game in swing states. WIRED reporting found that Blitz Canvassing, a contractor for the PAC, was threatening canvassers in Michigan, and transporting them in U-Hauls.

It is a cesspool of election conspiracy theories, which include everything from unauthorized immigrants voting to misspelled candidate names. A recent report by the Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University shows how social media can be used to facilitate political violence.

For months, billionaire and X owner Elon Musk has used his platform to share election conspiracy theories that could undermine faith in the outcome of the 2024 election. Last week, the political action committee (PAC) Musk backs took it a step further, launching a group on X called the Election Integrity Community. The group has nearly 50,000 members and says that it is meant to be a place where users can “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election.”

Smartmatic was accused of a conspiracy by Trump and his allies to rig the vote for Biden. And as Trump’s attorneys, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, piled up false claims in court, armies of online supporters descended on employees like Smith. Twitter users found his work history at several voting tech companies and concluded, “This must be the guy,” he recalls. People were threatening me and wanted to come to my house and show me love. Smith had been proud of his years of experience — work he considered a public benefit. But as Trump undercut trust in the system, Smith’s own mother believed the election had been stolen. It was caused by misinformation and online attacks that made me sad.

While there had long been some activists sowing doubt in the voting system, Smith says that in 2020, the industry was “caught off-guard by the volume and the ferociousness of the misinformation.” The leader of the Republican Party was responsible for the false claims. Major networks like Fox News were repeating their claims.

Election lies aren’t gone from conservative news outlets, according to the left-leaning media watchdog group Media Matters, but the tactics have changed. Media Matters senior adviser John Whitehouse says that so far in 2024, the difference seems to have been the ability of certain people in the political scene to steer conversation away from defamation claims about voting companies on social media. The core audience of the media want more election denial, which is why they will give it to them.

But the court of public opinion is just as important. Smartmatic and Dominion both have pages on their websites explaining their technologies and how they work. Smartmatic began publishing a handbook for fighting mis- and disinformation in 2016. In its latest edition, it walks election officials through how to audit media channels, build relationships with journalists, and create a crisis communications plan. It advises that election officials show concern and make sure their explanation is not more complicated than a lie.

Allowing voters to observe the process can help, says Sara Cutter, executive director of the nonpartisan trade group American Council for Election Technology. Jay Schneider was skeptical about the election process in 2020. “To be honest, when the 2020 election came around I was thinking, ‘This seems a little sketchy, what’s been going on. There are some antics going on in the country,’ he said in a Spotlight PA story. He decided to become a judge of elections after working the polls himself, because he was so impressed by the checks and balances in the system.

Smith thinks that personal experience with the system is useful. Throwing the election in a way that people think it’s thrown is not doable, he says, because of the checks and balances.

Smith said successful persuasion depends on the person and situation. Many people are content with learning more about the checks on the election system that prevent fraud, he says, but for “some percentage of people … you can tell them whatever you want to tell them, you can show them whatever you want to show them, it just doesn’t seem to sink in.”

The institutions trying to restore trust in it are being undermined by conspiracy theorists like Trump and Giuliani. Smith says people don’t like going to the Secretary of State website and saying that Vote by mail is safe, and here’s why. Now, people just simply don’t believe that individual.”

Some false claims may stem from misunderstandings. The industry was surprised by the call to use paper ballots, since 98 percent of the jurisdictions use it.

Likewise, while ensuring voting machines are secure is important, these machines are just one part of a larger system. Like the government itself, American elections have built-in checks and balances. It’s not going to be the same mix of technology and election administration procedures that will allow for compromise at a systemic level.

To do significant nationwide damage, an attacker would need to familiarize themselves with countless combinations of hardware and software. A single company like Dominion would not be able to change election results because there are processes to catch machines that aren’t working as expected.

The backlash against voting tech companies “is steeling their resolve,” Cutter says — “once elections get into your blood, a lot of folks don’t ever leave this space.” But it’s still taken a toll. Some ACET members have made emergency plans, while others have installed more security cameras.

They aren’t the only ones preparing for the possibility of violence. Across the country, election officials have stepped up security, anticipating threats. A recent Wall Street Journal report states that election workers in Arizona have undergone active shooter drills and an election office has armed guards and metal detectors. Fires at ballot boxes have caused damage to hundreds of ballots before Election Day.

Why is it that you want that narrative to be true, even if it is not true? Because I still believe in America. I believe in our innovation, in the hope that we give the world. And I believe in American resiliency and in the accountability that we have built into our systems.”